For many years, effort has been made to utilize the energy from the sun to produce electricity. On a clear day the sun provides approximately one thousand watts of energy per square meter almost everywhere on the planet's surface. The historical intention has been to collect this energy by using, for example, an appropriate solar semiconductor device. The collected energy is used to produce power by the creation of a suitable voltage and to maximize amperage, which is represented by the flow of electrons. However, to date, many photovoltaic or solar cells typically have low overall efficiency.
The success of the solar cell industry has been impeded due to this lack of efficiency in solar cell fabrication and usage. For example, it is relatively expensive to manufacture the semiconductor materials currently utilized for solar cells and applicable processes. One traditional approach for manufacturing solar cells has included converting low quality silicon wafers into solar cells by known techniques for treating low quality solar cells, which include etching of the wafers and subsequent processing of the silicon wafers so that they can function as solar cells. A second technique includes creating relatively thin layers of crystalline and/or amorphous silicon upon an appropriate substrate followed by processing techniques, which ultimately result in the production of a solar cell/solar panel. However, the extensive processes used in the above described approaches have historically been relatively inefficient, making the solar cell industry less than ideal.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the solar cell industry for solar cells and processes for fabricating the solar cells that address the aforementioned deficiencies and/or inadequacies.